LAST weekend to much fanfare from Ed Miliband, the Labour Party voted to change the way it arranges its links with the unions.

Labour’s Ed Miliband will depend more on Len McCluskey of Unite [GETTY]

The reforms moved from union members having to “opt out” of affiliation to the Labour Party to “opt in”, and introduced a version of “one member, one vote” for its leadership elections.

According to some this loosened the unions’ grip on Labour showing that Ed Miliband had boldly gone where even Tony Blair had feared to tread.

That’s one way of putting it.

If you want to see what the reforms really mean – strengthening the unions’ role and making Labour even more dependent on currying favour with union leaders – then look at what happened on Wednesday, just four days after the reforms were introduced.

In politics black is often portrayed as white so an event which seems to confirm one side’s spin can actually demonstrate the opposite.

That’s what happened on Wednesday, when Unite announced that it will reduce its annual affiliation fee to Labour from £3million to £1.5million.

You can spin that as showing that Labour is moving away from union funding and hence union influence. On the surface, that’s how it seems.

In reality the opposite is true. It shows how Labour is even more dependent than before. Here’s why.

At the moment Unite affiliates one million members to the Labour Party. Each member contributes £3 a year. That’s £3million in total.

Under the new Labour rules members will have to opt in to affiliation.

It has always been ridiculous that so many union members who clearly have no wish to be involved in any way with the Labour Party are treated by their union as affiliating.

Since polls suggest that fewer than half of all Unite members support Labour, the union’s general secretary Len McCluskey says it’s “untenable” to continue affiliating a million members.

So he has cut the number by half to 500,000.

In politics black is often portrayed as white so an event which seems to confirm one side’s spin can actually demonstrate the opposite

With that cut in affiliation comes a 50 per cent cut in the money the union hands over on behalf of its members.

It’s not just Unite. Last September the GMB union expressed its “considerable regret” at the reforms and slashed its funding from £1.2million to £150,000.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? It sounds like the unions are loosening their ties to Labour and Labour will be less tied to the huge cheques handed over by the union barons.

But nothing in politics is ever straightforward.

With the money cut by the GMB and Unite, Labour is now £2.55million worse off.

And the upshot of all this is that Labour and Ed Miliband will be even more dependent on donations from the unions and even less able to ignore their demands.

If you read the very same statement on Wednesday in which Unite announced the £1.5million cut, that truth is revealed.

Unite pointed out that it now has an even larger “political fund” – the pool of money it uses to finance its political agenda.

And unlike the sums handed over in affiliation fees, cash donated from the political fund is simply in the gift of the general secretary and the union’s executive.

With an election due in just over a year Labour desperately needs to add to its income.

A cut of £2.55million in income is inconceivable.

Guess how it will make up the shortfall?

From exactly the same source that has already given Labour £11million since Mr Miliband became leader: Unite.

But this time the money will come with obvious ties.

Unite is not going to hand over the money from its political fund for nothing.

It won’t be explicit of course.

There will be no list of Unite policy demands drawn up and signed on to by Mr Miliband which we can all throw back at him. Politics doesn’t work like that.

When the cash is handed over Labour will be able to say that it’s free of any ties.

But in the real world union leaders Len don’t give millions of pounds and expect nothing in return.

McCluskey expects to be a power in the land. He expects that Labour will do his bidding.

He even said as much at the special Labour conference that approved the new rules on Saturday.

He will no longer tolerate those who “welcome our money but don’t want our policy input”.

Under the new rules Unite and other unions will have even more “enhanced” influence because “our voice and our votes are looked at as legitimate…

This is our party and we are going nowhere”.

Don’t forget that we know how Mr McCluskey operates.

The reason Ed Miliband was forced on to the defensive over his party’s union funding was because of the scandal over Unite’s behaviour in Falkirk.

Some weeks ago the report of Labour’s own internal inquiry was leaked.

It found that “there can be no doubt that members were recruited to manipulate party processes”.

In other words Unite recruited members to the party to “manipulate” selection of the Falkirk parliamentary candidate.

Some Unite members did not even know they had been signed up to the party and the report found that there is “evidence that signatures were forged on either application forms or direct debit mandates or other documents”.

And this is the union to whom Labour will now have to turn to make up the shortfall brought about by the reduction in Unite’s affiliation.